In today’s digital world, interacting with friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter, is a main part of society. Facebook in particular allows users to easily connect with their long-lost friends, or just close family members. Being connected for most people is a priority, whether it is updating your Facebook status, or messaging a coworker about tomorrow’s meeting. Connectivity also ties in with marketing. When users share branded content on Facebook, they are not only connecting other people with that content, but they are also making a connection between themselves and the brand.

Back in the days when the only method of advertising was buying space in a magazine, or time on the radio, there was not a whole lot of interactivity occurring between the audience and the brand. With the emergence of the Internet and social media, the game of advertising changed. On Facebook, when a user shares an emotional advertisement with his or her friends, the receivers of that ad will feel more compelled to consider whatever product it may be, and take action and purchase it. Social media has allowed the audience to become the advertisers. Users feel more comfortable buying something that was recommended to them through a friend on Facebook.

Take a look at a campaign that Maserati performed on Facebook. Their goal was to engender consumer interest in their new Levante SUV. To achieve this, they created video ads that they posted on Facebook and Instagram. The videos all had a unique selling proposition, such as the driving experience or the exterior features. Using Facebook advertising tools like Lookalike Audiences and Custom Audiences, Maserati was able to target the right audience for them. As a result of this campaign, Maserati reached more than 4 million on Facebook and Instagram, and produce 21,000 leads. Of those 21,000 leads, 127 Levantes were sold, making Maserati’s campaign a success. What really pushed their campaign to glory was the disseminating of the videos by users on Facebook.

Sharing branded content on Facebook is the best way for companies to become connected with their audience, and for their audience to become connected with each other. Facebook Messenger allows companies to connect with their audience on a much more personal level than sharing. And in this wave of messaging that today’s society is in, it is imperative for brands to take advantage of the opportunities like this one on Facebook. Connectivity on Facebook allows brands to easily and affordably reach their audience, and provide them with the right amount of information for their product. Using Facebook’s many tools for advertising, accomplishing these connections with audiences is easier than ever. Connecting with audiences, and connecting audiences with each other is a golden opportunity for brands to establish a trust with them, and for their business to grow and prosper.

Connectivity is the glue of advertising; it joins consumers and advertisers together and creates a strong bond. In order to be truly successful in utilizing Facebook ads, you need to connect. It is important to appeal to consumers in order to create loyalty for your brand. The idea of connectivity is shown in two distinct types: connection of consumers with a brand and connection of consumers with consumers. Both of these have great impacts on the customer when it comes to brand loyalty and sales. Connectivity is something to keep in mind with every advertising move you make.

Connecting with your consumers is the most important aspect of advertising, and is even more important in today’s technological world. In order to properly reach your audience, you must truly know them. You must be able to reach your consumer wherever they are and however they are accessible and in ways that will resonate with them. No more pushing out one ad for everyone. It is necessary to make many different ads that appeal to and are relevant to your specific target audience. It is possible to stay connected by reaching out to consumers and listening to what they want and need out of your brand; you must not assume. Once a consumer is hooked, the relationship needs to be strengthened and maintained. This can be done by staying connected on a Facebook Page and having consumers create their own content regarding the brand.

It is also important to utilize Facebook in a way that allows your consumers to connect with each other. Facebook is a network with endless ties between people, and connections are constantly being made. Consumers who share good or bad reviews about your company are influencing their Facebook friends to feel the same way. That is why it is vital to advertise and connect with consumers who are influencers. Influencers have the power to persuade more consumers to buy a product or to trust a brand. That is the beauty of connectivity: a message to one can turn into a message to many.

It has ultimately been determined that Facebook is an excellent way for companies to communicate with their audience. Facebook hosts a wide range of users—people of all different ages, genders, and races. Facebook’s Connectivity Lab has been working to improve internet connectivity for people in remote locations, increasing Facebook’s audience even more.

The Facebook team is trying to find places with high populations where people live close enough to offer Wi-Fi hotspots. Mobile devices are the only way to connect online for the majority of the developing world, and the cost of providing mobile services is two to three times more expensive in rural areas than in cities. To appeal to areas where the mobile services are more prominent, Facebook has launched text and banner ads that work well on low-tech phones in developing countries. Connectivity is very important for reaching audiences from all over the world on one site, rather than spending the extra money to find and distribute the marketing messages to those across seas. Not only does connectivity have to do with people from all over using the internet, but it is also the idea that we are constantly connected to the internet and all the technology around us. Companies can build connectivity on Facebook, making it as easy as possible for the consumer to make a purchase.

The increase in connectivity has also lead to an increase in user-generated content, which normally receives the most engagement online. Audiences on social media relate and appeal well to content posted by users they know. This content created by the audience has helped create a lot of brand conversations on Facebook. Research shows that social media audiences consume more than five hours of user-generated content per day. Campaigns with this content have twenty-percent more influence on their purchase decisions in comparison to any other type of promotion. In Facebook’s 2016 updated news feed algorithm, emphasis was placed on content from friends and family, meaning the successful user-generated content was placed right on top. Therefore, marketers on Facebook should encourage their customer to create user-generated content about their brand, rather than the company producing content. If successful, this method could save the company a ton of money. Facebook is an excellent platform for creating conversation amongst an audience, and can help encourage the production of user-generated promoting a company.

Connectivity is key. Facebook makes the lives of consumers much more convenient when they connect with them and make content accessible. For instance, purchasing goods is quick and easy for the consumers who use mobile. Many people search the web and shop for things all the time, so being able to purchase something they want in a timely fashion is something Facebook is trying to offer. Facebook allowed the usage of PayPal to make transactions easier. These transactions allow consumers who already have their information plugged into PayPal make a quick and painless purchase.

Facebook has provided the opportunity for brands to successfully advertise and promote their products. A worldwide known brand, Adidas, has achieved in advertising their products by using this platform. By connecting with consumers they put together an easy, accessible campaign that allows its viewers to shop for their products at the click of a button. They showed an action-oriented video including their hoodie they wanted to sell in the video. Below this video, they were able to put four pictures of other products from adidas. By doing this, viewers could click on a picture of the product they liked, and it immediately took them to a page where they could finalize the purchase. Adidas had great success in online purchases for their brand through the use of Facebook advertising.

Another success story from the Adidas brand relates to connections in places that do not have as great of a connection to the internet. Adidas used video like slideshows to show different types of training for people who do not have coaches, and called it “Pocket Coach.” The brand’s goal was to reach out to aspiring athletes who do not necessarily have the connection through Facebook as easily as most people do. Using the slideshow campaign made it easier for the connection to speed up, and resulted in over a million views. Not everyone has the same resources, but Facebook made this campaign possible for brands to reach out to all kinds of consumers across the globe.

Fake news is a subject that today’s citizens are much too familiar with. Fake news has spread all over the internet, especially on Facebook. Within just six hours, there were 10,000 shares of a fake news article about Denzel Washington backing Donald Trump on Facebook. The era of fake news is not something that just popped up in the world. A form of fake news, Yellow Journalism, dates back to the Spanish-American War, and is a major reason why it began. Nonetheless, today, with the mass amount of information available to anyone in the world at any time, it is difficult to tell what news is real, and what is fake.

Advertising runs into some issues with the wave of fake news on Facebook. Professional brands want to advertise in respectable areas on social media, not places where fake news is abundant. Facebook creates a lot of revenue from advertising, so the fact that advertisers may stray away from Facebook as an advertising medium is risky. Resolving this issue is a must for Facebook. One way that Facebook is fighting back against fake news is by removing links that bring users to spam websites that are filled with advertisements and bogus information. Listening, a process used by social media marketing researchers, helps better understand the culture of the target audience. By using this key marketing strategy, Facebook is connecting with truthful journalists to get insight into how they fact check their resources. Most importantly, they are working on creating a more powerful detection of fake news which will generate a trustful relationship between Facebook and users.

Among other methods to remove misinformation, these acts by Facebook will most certainly create a more positive atmosphere on the leading social media platform. With a more sensible environment, brands will be more comfortable advertising on Facebook.

Facebook is all about connectivity. Users, the consumers, see their Facebook friends as influencers for certain products and ideas. If a Facebook user posts a photo of their new Apple Watch, their Facebook friends will see that post and become compelled to purchase one of their one. In order for advertisers to improve sales and marketing, it is necessary to target those who have the most power to influence others online. This idea of connectivity and influencing is the basis for Facebook and it needs to be focused on by advertisers.

In order for advertisers to start reaching more consumers, they need those consumers to actually be interested in and hooked by their ads. Simply pushing out a mundane one-dimensional ad online is not going to cut it anymore. Advertisers need to target Facebook users, who are influencers, that have the capability to create their own content about a product, then share that content with their friends. This content can range from a written post, video, photo, or other creative work. This will create buzz for the product, which is needed for any online advertisement to succeed.

In 2016, 69% of brands surveyed answered that their use of influencer advertising was effective. Advertisers are using influencers to create awareness of their brand and to target those who are most relevant to their brand. Influencers have a fan-base who are followers because they can relate to them. This is a strong advantage for advertisers because they can advertise products that are important to their influencer’s followers. Those followers will take the influencer’s advice because they look up to them and trust them.

In order for advertisers to improve their Facebook presence and overall brand awareness, it is necessary to target influencers who can help effectively advertise the brand. This improvement can help skyrocket sales, awareness, and loyalty for a brand and is a part of the future of advertising online.

Facebook is an excellent way to get information out to a marketer’s target audience, if the audience is on the site. However, recently companies have had a hard time knowing who is viewing their videos, how long they are being viewed for, and how successful the video is in catching their interest. Reports have shown that the descriptions of audience numbers that Facebook has been giving to advertisers were inaccurate, and Facebook has been trying to fix its inaccurate measuring methods and save their reputation as a go-to vehicle of communication. Facebook has apologized for overstating the measured video viewership, but claimed the errors are not monumental since metrics is not involved with billing the advertisers. Since these reports about the social network overstating the size of monthly audiences by more than twice the actual amount were released, the ad industry has wanted more openness from Facebook. They have ensured more transparency by relying on third parties to verify its numbers and to work with companies to show more accurately the number and length of views. Agencies have also insisted on knowing how successful their ads perform on other websites, how often their competitors run ads, and how long most people actually use Facebook on a daily basis.

Facebook video has otherwise proven to be a very effective mode of advertising. With the ability for users to easily share videos, the chance of these advertisements going viral increases. Facebook has recently been focusing a lot more on its live video product. They have been paying BuzzFeed $3.05 million per year to publish live video, as well as The New York Times and CNN. These heavy amount of resources going towards the development of Facebook Live shows how much the social network relies on it to be successful. Facebook has also been trying to convince companies to jump to Facebook Live. This has been a tough feat since it is hard for companies to make high quality videos on the fly.

Facebook Live has not been as successful as they anticipated as of now. The livestreams posted by big media companies like NBC only make up 15% of the top 200 most-viewed live videos since it has started—the majority is posted by celebrities and public figures. However, in regular Facebook video, the media companies are the most-viewed.

Facebook has room for many improvements in their platform. Typically, Facebook struggles with measuring their data in terms of who is viewing ads of different brands. For an advancement, they came up with beacons and Bluetooth & Place Tips. These two improvements are being implemented in hopes for locating consumers, and also giving them more information depending on where they are. They will be able to see who views an ad and the steps the consumer takes up until the purchase. This will improve marketer’s measurement all around and help them decide what works and what doesn’t. Facebook believes this will greatly expand, and has made these beacons free for most businesses to participate in.

Another improvement that people might not realize is how visually appealing an ad is. Videos and pictures should stand out amongst the rest. To do this, brands should work on emotionally engaging with the consumer through their advertisement. Having some sort of emotional attachment will hook them. Consumers will have their attention if what they see captures their interest. Brands can complete a sale or draw more clicks to their ads if it is more visually pleasing to the eye. An improvement would be to reduce the amount of text and really focus on visual storytelling.

Procter & Gamble, one of the biggest advertisers, had criticized Facebook’s inaccurate results of ad viewership. These criticisms were heard loud and clear from Facebook and they began to brainstorm improvements. To improve, they needed accurate tools for measuring ads. They took action by giving marketers new data for the display ads. A great improvement is providing options to marketers and their brands, such as various options for new video ad buying. Marketers will buy ad space if they are confident that they have the tools to measure the performance on those ads.